There is only one lobbying game in town: grabbing for bailout bucks. Changes at the Stevens trial, while more stories unfold regarding the Alaska senator’s earmarking. Earmark disclosure in the Senate is still woefully inadequate. All of that in today’s news:

What’s bad for the goose, is good for the gander. Crisis in business tends to mean profits for lobbyists, especially when the private sector is seeking direct payments from the government. The AP reports that the quest for a piece of the $700 billion bailout pie is currently the only lobbying game in town. I can see the scene now, blue power suits swarming past Albert Gallatin as they enter the Treasury Department building on Pennsylvania Ave. to beg for their clients like so many street corner hobos. I can’t wait for those 4th quarter lobbying disclosures.

The judge hearing the charges against Sen. Ted Stevens replaced a juror after attempts to contact a juror on leave for the death of her father failed. The judge instructed the jury to begin deliberations anew today. Meanwhile, the AP reports on another questionable earmark Sen. Stevens sought and received for a campaign contributor Bob Persons. Persons, an Alaska restauranteur, is also the provider of the nearly $3,000 massage chair that is at the center of one of the seven charges filed against the senator. The new earmark revelations show that after seeking $10 million for road projects in Girdwood, Alaska, Sen. Stevens pushed hard for the state transportation agency to use $2.7 million in funds to pave a road connecting directly to the Double Musky Inn, a Cajun restaurant owned by Persons. Stevens insisted that the road paving project be priority number one, despite it ranking sixth in importance on a list of road projects.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Sen. Bob Bennett finally released a list of his defense earmark recipients, but only due to confusion between his office and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Unlike in the House, senators are not required to reveal the recipients of earmarks. Instead, they operate on a voluntary disclosure agreement, with 50% of senators revealing who they earmark funds to. Sen. Bennett has not been one of those 50% until now after the subcommittee told his staff that they were going to make the information public also. The subcommittee never did release the earmark information, but Bennett did. The Senate should scrap voluntary disclosure and institute mandatory earmark disclosure requirements as the House has done.

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Who knew a little bill requiring senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically could cause such a problem on Capitol Hill? Today, Senate Republicans under the stewardship of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tried their hand at a parliamentary trick to add poison pill amendments to S. 223. When Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to move S. 1, the Senate' lobbying reform package, to conference committee Sen. Bob Bennett attempted to add S. 223 while reserving the right to add another amendment. Bennett likely wanted to slip in the same amendment that he tried to add to S.223 when it was in committee. That amendment would allow party committees, like the RNC or the DSCC, to coordinate campaign activities with candidate committees. Bennett's amendment is widely opposed by the majority Democrats and would not only make S. 223's passage impossible in conference or in the House of Representatives, but would endanger the entire lobbying and ethics reform package. Reid scuttled this parliamentary trickery by objecting to Bennett's proposition. The Senate went into convulsions and recessed without advancing S. 1 to conference committee. (There are some conflicting accounts of exactly how this proceeded.))

Since the Senate minority is upping the ante with procedural tricks, the Sunlight Foundation has decided to up the ante on Mitch McConnell. Today, Sunlight announced the extension of the deadline for our campaign to get Mitch McConnell on the record responding to questions about the continued blocking of S. 223. Not only is the deadline extended but the prize money is doubled. You will now receive $1,000 if you are the first to submit a video of McConnell responding to questions about the bill. Check out What's McConnell Hiding? for more details.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced that the Senate electronic filing bill mark-up will be held next Wednesday, March 28th. During the Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing on Sen. Russ Feingold's electronic filing bill ranking member Bob Bennett declared his intention to introduce amendments during the committee mark-up of the bill. Bennett promised that these amendments would be non-controversial. It appears that Bennett isn't going to keep his promise. The Campaign Finance Institute is sending out a letter to Congress demanding that the committee approve the bill as a stand alone measure with no amendments. In the letter Bennett is said to be introducing a highly controversial, partisan amendment that, if attached, would make the bill D.O.A. on the floor of the Senate. Read a section of the letter:

"Yet an amendment circulated by Senator Bennett for the March 28th scheduled mark-up of the Senate-only electronic disclosure bill — to repeal the 30 year old legal limits on all party spending in coordination with candidates– is extremely complex and controversial. It has long been opposed by major campaign reform groups. And it has produced a very strong partisan division in Congress. A similar provision was inserted by the Republican-led House Rules Committee — without a floor vote — into a 527 reform bill that passed the House in 2006 with overwhelming Democratic opposition. The Senate Democratic leadership voiced strong opposition to this provision and we have confirmed that it is opposed to the Bennett Amendment. Whatever one thinks of the substantive merits or flaws in this amendment — I personally have favored this change in the context of other campaign finance reforms–it has no place in a noncontroversial Senate consensus bill."

Clearly Bennett's aim is to wreck a bill which would pass the Senate unanimously if introduced as a stand alone. Five members of the committee are co-sponsors of the bill. The rest of the committee should vote against Bennett's attempt to kill the bill. They should vote against the amendments and for transparency. If your Senator is on the Rules and Administration Committee (check here) tell them to vote against Bennett's amendments and for greater transparency.

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